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Arctic Nation
Arctic Nation is the second installment in the series. It was published in 2003 by Dargaud for the French-speaking market, and republished in the United States in 2004 by iBooks for the English-speaking market. Summary Blacksad deals with inter-racial violence and racial segregation of the 1950s in a pseudo-American suburbia called The Line. The story also addresses issues of economic depression, sexual repression and perversion, all intended to expose the social malice and prejudice that exist beneath the apparently harmonious surfaces of communities. Synopsis John Blacksad witnesses a black vulture hanged in a street. As he writes his notes on the incident, he sees a weasel peeking into his notes. The weasel introduces himself as Weekly from What's News. Blacksad rejects him at first due to his unpleasant smell, and because Weekly mistakes him for a fellow tabloid journalist. Blacksad reveals that he is working for an old elementary school teacher, Miss Grey (a doe), to find and rescue a young bear girl, Kaylie, who disappeared, quite possibly kidnapped by the Black Claws gang, a racist political organization similar to the Ku Klux Klan. However, Miss Grey seems concerned that nobody, not even Kaylie's mother is worried about her daughter's disapperance. The scene shifts to a rally where a polar bear is preaching about the superiority of the white race. There Blacksad runs into Weekly who persists him to join him for a drink. Three white-furred goons enter the bar and harass a black blind old magpie named 'Cotten. '''One of them harasses Blacksad resulting in him being thrown into the bar counter by Blacksad. Their leader, a white Arctic fox called Huk, turns out to be a close friend of the local Chief of Police, Karup (a polar bear). The pair is taken to Karup and he is shown to hold racial prejudice himself. Blacksad confronts Kaylie's mother, Dinah, about her daughter's disappearance, which she has mysteriously failed to report to the police. As she dresses up in front of him, he takes note of a white birthmark right above her breasts. She reveals that there is an ongoing war in the suburb between whites and the coloured people. She refused to report her daughter's disappearance because she does not want the white justice. He suggests an affair between herself and the son of Oldsmill, a rich white socialite. Dinah takes great offense at the claim and hits Blacksad hard on his face in anger. Blacksad and Weekly later clash with a black horse, black bull and black dog at a store - members of the black activist organisation named the "'Black Claws" ('''originally accused of Kyle's abduction) and similar in their toughness to the Black Panther Party's doctrines. They force Weekly to publish a statement denying their involvement in the kidnapping of Kaylie. Blacksad then decides to visit Oldsmill, but discovers that Oldsmill's son is mentally handicapped as a result of their family's heavy inbreeding, and thus unlikely to have had an affair with Dinah. In the meantime, Weekly investigates the activities of Karup's wife, Jezabel (a 'white' bear). He sees Huk entering her house and later peeks through a window into their bedroom to witness Jezabel and Huk having sex. He later followed her to a restaurant and witness her emotional meeting with Dinah. Dinah appears to blackmail Jezabel by threatening to reveal 'what she knows'. Weekly informs Blacksad of his findings. Blacksad places his suspicion on Karup, already rumoured to be a paedophile. Blacksad then returns to Dinah's apartment to interrogate her but finds her murdered. At this point, suspecting Karup of the murder, he confronts him and his wife in front of their church. Blacksad accuses Huk and Jezabel of adultery. In consequence, Karup attacks Huk (Huk reveals that he killed Dinah) and argues violently with Jezabel: during their tête-à-tête, it comes to light that they have never had sex. The black, blind magpie called Cotten (complicit in the abduction and threatened into co-operation) leads Blacksad to an Arctic Nation meeting in a derelict war factory where Kaylie - and Weekly, also having been abducted - are hidden. Blacksad disguises as an Arctic Nation goon and witnesses Karup being betrayed and hanged by Huk, supposedly for kidnapping and child abuse. As Weekly is brought next to be hanged, Blacksad, on the guise of being the hangman, knocks down a burning cross, setting the factory on fire. As the factory burns, Cotten confronts Huk and pleads him to take the girl too. When Huk refused, Cotten threatened to reveal that Huk was behind the kidnapping. In retaliation, he shoots Cotten in the abdomen and leaves. Blacksad rescues Weekly and later finds the dying Cotten who takes him inside a war plane in the factory where Kaylie was being kept. Cotten dies sitting on the pilot seat. Blacksad carries Kaylie and accompanied by Weekly, escapes from the burning factory. Later, he visits Huk's garage to question him but finds Huk murdered - with a screwdriver through the brain. Blacksad corners Jezabel after her husband's funeral, when she visists Dinah's grave after everyone had left. Blacksad rips open Dinah's top and sees her birthmark matching that of Dinah's birthmark, proving that she is Dinah's twin : Dinah had brown pelt with a white marking above her breasts, Jezabel has white pelt with the same marking in the same position but black in colour. Jezabel revealed that her father was in fact Karup, who had abandoned her black pregnant mother to die in the middle of the night, deep in the woods, during a snowstorm, after being turned from a sweet, caring husband to a racist monster by the doctrines of Oldsmill himself. However, Jezabel's mother lived long enough to raise the twins but her mind was hurt and broken beyond repair. She did all she could do to survive but in the end she died severely emaciated. Her death was witnessed by her twin daughters. Fuelled by revenge, Jezabel ascended 'white society' under a false identity, eventually marrying Karup. Revealing she was his daughter, she refuses him any intimacy and blackmails him into silence by threatening to reveal that not only had he married a coloured woman, he had on top of that married his daughter after trying to kill his pregnant former wife. With Dinah was hired as their maid, Jezabel seduced and manipulated Huk, using him to carry out the fake kidnapping, thus capitalising on the rumours of Karup's paedophilia. Huk also spontaneously murdered Dinah 'to make sure she kept her mouth shut'; and so in the aftermath of Karup's hanging, Jezabel in turn killed Huk by way of vengeance for her sister. Blacksad then asks what did Kaylie do to deserve that suffering, to which Jezabel, realizing what she did to her niece, is left without words. Blacksad meets up with Miss Grey and compliments her on her dedication towards the neighbourhood’s children while the school's kids, Kaylie among them, enjoys a snowball fight in the sun. After the two say goodbye, Blacksad finds Kaylie sadly staring at him, and he stares back sadly as well. The book concludes by highlighting Kyle's innocence and her ultimate abandonment, but her fate is not made clear (we can infer that since she is still in the same primary school, her aunt Jezabel became her guardian). The original book's third cover depicts Blacksad scattering Cotten's ashes to the wind over Las Vegas, fulfilling his last wish. Category:Comics